“Reuters” by Wire

"Reuters" is one of the 21 blasts that make up Pink Flag, Wire's debut album, recorded at Advision Studios in London in the autumn of 1977 and released on Harvest that November. Colin Newman sings, Bruce Gilbert plays guitar, Graham Lewis electric bass and Robert Gotobed drums, and all four share the writing credit, with Mike Thorne producing and Paul Hardiman recording.

The British band's first record was acclaimed from the off and has cast a long shadow since, now held up as a landmark of post-punk. Robert Christgau called it a punk suite, praising its mix of rawness and detachment and hearing an irony far bleaker and scarier than anything the Ramones offered, while Ira Robbins, in Trouser Press, said Wire had pushed minimalism somewhere new, trading songs for fragments of impression closer to beat poetry.

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